Why Do We Need a To-Do List?

Did you ever get the feeling that you forgot to do something important? Often times we can become distracted from our day to day activities by trying to remember that one thing that’s bugging us. It’s often called the Zeigarnik effect and it has a pesky habit of interfering with your current activities.

The Purpose of a To-Do List

What can help you keep track of your duties and your productivity is a to-do list. Having an organized schedule and putting down reminders, will keep you focused on your current task and it should also prevent you from stressing out about something you left unfinished.

Having a to-do list close by can also prevent you from getting distracted by other activities or plans unrelated to your work.

How to Organize Tasks

Just because you’re marking events in your calendar doesn’t mean you’re doing enough. The purpose of a to-do list is to efficiently organize your schedule. Let’s say you have to work on four different projects during the span of a week.

To be as efficient as possible you arrange them by order of importance and urgency. That way even if you get an idea of what you could do for the third project of the week you can put it away quickly when you see your to-do list.

Handling Similar Tasks

No matter how similar two tasks or projects may be you shouldn’t try to tackle them at the same time. Consulting your to-do list is a good way of reminding yourself of what your priorities are.

Even if two or more projects have very similar demands it’s hard to work on more than one in parallel. Contrary to popular belief the human brain is not that good at multi-tasking.

You may think that you’re paying enough attention to both tasks but in reality your missing out on important details or worse, you may be confusing bits of information.

Your to-do list should be your own creation. Only you can be the best judge of your abilities which is why you’re the right person for the job. A great way of arranging your daily or weekly activities is using the BubblesPlanner app. It has a simple user interface yet it is also highly customizable so that you can arrange your tasks and reminders for maximum efficiency.